Is UK Education Secretary Gove Destroying Foundations Of English Education?

Scores of teachers have voiced their complaints about the state of public education in the U.S.: the prevalence of standardized tests, teachers being laid off, class sizes getting ever bigger.

Now it seems that educators in the UK have the same problems. The Guardian reports on last month’s National Union of Teachers conference, which opened with this address by Marilyn Harrop, union president:

Gove Set To Destroy Foundations That Governed English Education For Over 100 Years

But there’s something even more significant going on: just as some of us are fearful of the growth of charter schools, the voucher movement and the apparent push to privatize education in the U.S., so many of my teacher colleagues in the UK are alarmed at what is happening in their schools.

Last month, official figures confirmed that the majority of secondary schools in the UK – 1,641 out of 3,261 – will have become academies by September. They will be “free” of local authority control and accountable solely to Michael Gove, the secretary of state for education, who hopes academies will become the norm. In just two years, Gove will have destroyed the foundations of the power structure that governed English education for more than a century.

What Is An Academy?

Academies are state-maintained but independently-run schools in England set up with the help of outside sponsors. They have more freedoms than schools under local authority control. The brainchild of former Labour prime minister Tony Blair, academies were established in 2000 to drive up standards by replacing failing schools in struggling local authorities.

Academies have more independence over what they teach, they can choose to award bonuses to their staff and pay headteachers £30,000 more than in other schools. They are not under local authority control and so arguably are subject to less bureaucracy and have more freedom over their budgets. They can change the length of the school term and day.

Sound Familiar?

If these features sounds remarkably similar to charter schools and voucher programs, that’s because they are.

The biggest academy sponsor in England is the United Learning Trust, which runs 17 schools. Lord Harris of Peckham, the millionaire chair of Carpetright, supports eight south London city academies, Wellington academy in Wiltshire is sponsored by Wellington College, Peter Jones of Dragons’ Den sponsors an enterprise academy, and Microsoft sponsors IT academies. Early academies were set up by Sir Peter Vardy, a Christian philanthropist who was accused of advocating the teaching of creationism in science in the schools, and Graham Able, the head of the prestigious Dulwich college in London.

They are a controversial feature of the education landscape, and there have been numerous demonstrations against them.

As a survey by the thinktank Reform showed last week, most schools that convert to academy status do so because they get extra cash, which would otherwise be retained by local authorities for central services such as helping pupils with special needs. One school calculated it would get an extra £462 per pupil, a 10% rise. Most academies do not plan to change their curriculum, school day or admissions policy. Despite union fears, most will stick to national agreements on staff pay and conditions as, indeed, do most fee-charging schools.

Why Academies?

So what is the point of academies? There are several possibilities. First, so-called “independent” academies increase the opportunities for commercial involvement in state-funded education. Many schools will use their extra cash to pay private companies to run anything from back-office management to teaching and learning programs.

Then again, without local authorities to hold the ring, schools will compete more fiercely for able and advantaged pupils who can boost exam scores. Academies will be allowed to expand their intakes even if that undermines neighboring schools by depriving them of pupils. And we’ve certainly seen how that works in the U.S.

And it just might be that the Tories would like to see the return of grammar schools, in place of comprehensive schools; this would be easier if schools were academies.

All Power To Central Government

The advance of academies means the demise of local education authorities, with all power going to the government in London, rather than being dispersed, as it used to be, with teachers, parents, local councils and central government all having rights and responsibilities defined by statute.

43 comments

I want all schools to be public through college, techinical, business schools and job training. I want all children to receive a stellar education no matter the financial status of their parents. I want our Department of Education to start looking at schools that are succeeding outside the U. S. A., beating our kids at math, science, etc., and do a major overall of our public educational system. I want them to demand teachers from the top tier of graduating classes and pay them entry salaries and slaries that compete with business. It is stupid what this country and apparently some others are doing to their public educational systems, the entire country and it's citizens beneftis from a well educated, well trained society.

Education is about learning to think, not memorising tests, the system neo-liberals and conservatives seem to love, A computer can do a better job. Do we want our children to become human computers - or creative thinkers with the ability to anayse and argue a point of view without having the questions and the answers rammed down their throats. No one person, in government or elsewhere, should decide the subjects children are taught, and the way they are taught. The syllabus for schools should be developed by expert, non government committees and supervised by national or regional authorities. Otherwise the education of children can fall into the hands of vested interests, or individuals spouting propaganda for their slanted points of view - such as an intention, by some wooly headed dinosaur, to teach Creationism at the expense of scientific Darwinism, or a political party proposing to teach their version of 20th century politics.

@Terry O: The true golden age of English schooling was already past when I got my education at Ashlyns Grammar School in Berkhamsted. Ashlyns was a big school for its day, and was actually two schools in one building, the Grammar School and the Secondary Modern. Yes, the 11-Plus results sent us into one or the other, the Grammar streams were titled U1, U2 and U3, and the Secondary Modern A1-3, B1-3 and C1 and C2. But where you are mistaken, Terry, is that people in the C-streams had very small classes, as I suggested in my previous comment (which is how I know this works!) and the Grammar streams had mostly 40 in a class. Thus the pupils struggling with the work or with behavioural difficulties actually had the more expensive education! The 'high-fliers' were keen and competitive and constantly challenged by their studies, so did not get bored or disruptive.

The other notion of which I would disabuse you, Terry, is that those who 'failed' the 11-plus were thenceforth 'written off'. Pupils were freely transferred, not only between classes in their own stream, but yes, between streams, including between U and A streams i.e. between the Grammar and Secondary Modern, depending upon their progress, in a promotion-relegation system similar to the English Football League. Certain subjects were taken together by the whole year's pupils in both Schools, e.g. sport. Other subjects were separately streamed according to ability e.g. Art and Music, so in my Art class (nominally in the